Organist had love for French culture

24 May 2012 — 3:00am

Norman Johnston was a professor of the organ at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, and the University of Sydney organist for more than 30 years.

His birth, to Norman and Jacqueline Johnston, on November 10, 1917, in Noumea, where his grandfather and uncle served as British consuls, predisposed him towards a lifelong admiration for his mother's French culture.

Respected … Norman Johnston in 1939. Many of his pupils went on to achieve international reputations as performers.Credit:Max Dupain

His ability to communicate this and his inculcation of the highest professional standards in performance, resulted in his being held in enormous esteem.

After schooling at Shore, Norman became a pupil of Lilian Frost, to whom he was devoted. He was chosen as her successor as the organist at Pitt Street Congregational Church.

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His first public performance at the church had been as an associate artist to Frost when he was 18 years old.

In 1939 he won three first prizes for piano and organ at the Sydney Eisteddfod.

He then enlisted in the second Australian Imperial Force after the fall of France, and served in Egypt and Palestine, but transferred to the RAAF in 1943 in order to serve in Europe. Ever the pessimist, he did not expect to survive, but fate had other plans for him.

After the war, Johnston was a pupil of George Faunce Allman in Sydney, Harold Darke in London and the great but stylistically controversial, blind French organist, Andre Marchal in Paris. In 1949, he married Margery Makin, a soprano.

As an associate of the Royal College of Organists, Johnston respected the English cathedral music tradition while having greater admiration for the professionalism of the French school.

Thus, he became a major influence in introducing Sydney audiences and musicians to contemporary French music, especially the compositions of Olivier Messiaen.

As the conductor of the Oriana Singers he also pioneered historically authentic performances in Sydney of the great choral works.

However, his planned performance in 1963, of Bach's Passion According to St Matthew, scheduled for Sydney Town Hall, had to be cancelled the day before as a by-law had been discovered that prohibited the use of the Town Hall for any event on Good Friday for which admission was charged. The by-law was eventually changed.

As the University of Sydney organist, Johnston played at the graduation ceremonies of thousands of students.

He was also responsible for the university's acquisition of a pipe organ, for the great hall, by the brilliant German maker Rudolf von Beckerath, now widely regarded as Sydney's finest modern pipe organ.

It was the first of its type to be brought to Australia and was installed between 1971 and 1972.

Johnston was the first to recognise and encourage the genius of Ronald Sharp as an organ voicer (a specialist in regulating the tone of organ pipes). Sharp was employed in the construction of the university organ and went on to build the Sydney Opera House's grand organ.

Johnston was notoriously self-effacing and could never be found after a concert. Typically, he declined the university's proffered award of an honorary doctor of music in 1994.

His pupils included the first Sydney organists to achieve international reputations as performers: Michael Dudman, David Rumsey and David Kinsela.

He taught at St Peter's Anglican Church in east Sydney, where he was also the organist for many years.

Informed by a tolerant Christian faith, Johnston was also an organist and the choirmaster at the Scots' Church and Pitt Street Congregational Church in the city, St Paul's in Redfern, St Mark's in Darling Point, St Michael's at Vaucluse, Mary Immaculate in Waverley, and St John's in Darlinghurst.

Johnston was an honorary life member of the Organ Music Society of Sydney and was a founding councillor of the Organ Institute of NSW.